CitizenCon 2948 - The Call of a Dragonfly

Way back in January we had a conversation with CIG “CitizenCon is in Austin this year so we’re good.” “Aye, it would be crazy for us to build something and ship it to the US.” Fast forward a few months and the call came in with the request to make a full size dragonfly. Forget the crazy, we were in.

The Brief? “A full size dragonfly. An immersive experience.” We responded “Something people can climb onto? Something they can sit on? Feel the roar of the engines? Hear the lasers firing? Yellowjacket?” Yessss!

The process

JR took to the PC to redraw the model into something we could cut, no small task with a model as complex as the Dragonfly. Each element needed to be separated out and re-drawn to make it possible to mill from solid wood.

Meanwhile Kals took to organising space to build this beast – except it was too late – all of our usual workshop space was booked out so our own little workshop expanded – into the rest of our house.

The Tech

Cue JR and our pi guy StevenTheGeek to get those screens and thrusters working and huge thanks to Darren Lambourne & Graham Philipson at CIG for their help on the sound.

The Build

Cue the most insane 3d jigsaw ever, hundreds of pieces cut from dozens of sheets of high grade birch ply over weeks of milling to slowly built up each component of the bike. We cut and we sanded. Then we cut and we sanded some more and she started to take shape.

All that was left was to wrap her component pieces for her journey and off the crates go on their maiden voyage until we saw them in Austin.

The Trip

A tense two weeks later as our little spaceship made took her first flight across the pond from Scotland to Austin until we put her together again.